Thanks to Stakwork for transcribing our Twitter Spaces!
Voltage – 00:00:07:
All right, guys. Happy Wednesday. This is Bobby and Nate from Voltage, and this week we’re with the team. From NOAH. We’ve got Brianna and Alan. Alan will be here in just a moment. But Brianna, thank you so much for joining us this week.
Brianna – 00:00:22:
I’m so happy to be here.
Voltage – 00:00:24:
Yes. So I’m really excited to talk about what you guys are doing in Bitcoin banking. I saw you hit 70K sign-ups on the waitlist this morning. Congrats.
Brianna – 00:00:37:
Thank you. Yeah, it’s been a crazy week. Sometimes the viral loops just happen. But we’re really excited because obviously, it’s validation for what we’re building, right? And the more people that sign up, the more we realize, okay, we need to get this product out to everyone ASAP, because clearly everyone wants it. So it’s great. It’s great for us.
Voltage – 00:01:02:
Yeah. So, behind the Voltage account, this is Bobby. And one of the things I’ve done since I came into Bitcoin in 2017 was right in 2018, or 19, before I really started holding all my Bitcoin and cold storage is I would explore and try all of the different yield apps. The earning apps like that just have my attention. And I know just knowing our culture and how people think about managing their money and allocating capital, people are really excited to, it seems, earned yield. And just to live on a Bitcoin standard, there’s the get-on-zero crowd. You’ve got cold storage folks and some who want to maybe leverage their Bitcoin for getting loans and doing business acquisitions, but give us kind of a high level, maybe, just how NOAH is just seeing the needs of the market and just what you guys are focused on and just what you’re building for, I guess, in this first iteration in the beta of your platform.
Brianna – 00:02:06:
Totally. Yeah. So, obviously, I wish we could release all of our features right away. I think that would be amazing. But we are starting off with a very payment-focused and very reward-focused app. So that means you’ll be able to send Lightning payments, which we can already do right now, using a NOAH Lightning address, which is really exciting. We got a NOAH.me domain, so you’ll be able to register your Lightning address when you become a beta tester. So beta testers are already able to pre-register that. So we have the Lightning address. We have Lightning payments that we’re trying to make more intuitive for a non-crypto, non-Bitcoin native person. Right. So I’m thinking of some of my best friends, my parents, ex-coworkers or whatever, that just aren’t tuned into other Bitcoin apps, other crypto apps. I hate the word crypto, but crypto users are going to be I think of them as like, future Bitcoiners. Right. So just really easy to use Lightning payments. That’s what we want to hone down first. The second is the rewards piece. So we’re building out a really fun gamified app where basically everything that you do in the app, every good piece of financial behavior, you get rewarded for with NOAH points. And those points kind of like credit card points. You can pay off your cards, you can exchange for sats, you can do a whole bunch of things with them, apply to your yield, so have a higher yield on your account and all these other things, and basically collect these badges that kind of make it a little bit of a game to play in the app. But that’s really just the first iteration of the app. What we’re going to be releasing later down the line, which I’m super excited about, is our savings platform and our credit card. In addition to that, we’re looking into options for bill pay within the app for actual payroll services. So if you’re a company that’s employing people around the world, it’s really difficult to pay your employees on the Fiat standard, but with Bitcoin, it’s a lot easier. So we’re looking into those types of solutions, basically to just create this financial super app that it’s the only app you need, and that’s what we’re trying to build here. But I’m really excited about it.
Voltage – 00:04:50:
That is exciting. Yeah. I remember when I first joined Robin Hood years ago, back when I paid attention to Wall Street Bets, and just seeing like, whenever you make a certain decision in the app and the confetti goes off and you get that dopamine hit. I feel like there’s a shift from these dopamine hit apps that get you to just kind of make quick, fast decisions. But I feel like with Bitcoin and just the ethos of Bitcoiners is living and operating with a low time preference, there are actually dopamine hits you guys could create that would lead to better saving or spending habits and just kind of aligning your app with the ethos of a Bitcoiner, which is kind of cool to think about.
Brianna – 00:05:31:
Yeah, exactly. We don’t want to be a casino in your pocket. Right. We want to help people achieve their financial goals, not scam people into thinking that they’re doing that, when in reality, we’re actually profiting off of them. Right. So I think for us, we’re being very careful here, and we’re considering things like, okay, what currency should we offer that are going to help Bitcoin adoption and not hinder it? How can we guide people so that they understand the reason why we don’t have millions of coins in the app? Help them understand what real money is and what assets are? These are things that have to do with having basic financial literacy, which, to no one’s fault, it’s lacking in most people. Right. I would say that a lot of my close friends are not very financially literate, but they’re very smart people. And so I think a lot that we’re doing too, has to do with education and helping folks really understand what it is that they’re doing and rewarding them for that. Right? That’s a really big part of it.
Voltage – 00:06:49:
Yeah, absolutely. There was a stat like Lending Club that I read today, one third of consumers earning $250,000 or more annually live paycheck to paycheck. And I can imagine there’s obviously some education that could be done by you guys in terms of just saving financial literacy, but also educating on Bitcoin. How do you guys approach that problem where there’s not really financial education in schools, but you guys kind of can grab two problems by the horns, just basic financial education and savings, but also Bitcoin, how do you approach that?
Brianna – 00:07:27:
So that’s actually a really good question. The first thing that we’ve started to do is write tons of blog posts, basic blog posts, explaining simple concepts like what is Bitcoin? What is a blockchain in general? And why does everyone keep talking about it, telling stories of how we got into Bitcoin? We just released a new blog post written by our growth manager, Josephine, who literally quit her job in the beauty industry, didn’t know anything about Bitcoin, but was so moved by NOAH’s mission. And she just said, hey, look, you have to be patient with me. I’m going to learn. Just sharing stories and helping people through this whole process of learning. I think it’s going to be really important in education being inclusive of everyone who is interested in learning about Bitcoin as well. I think there is a lot of exclusivity in the Bitcoin community in general. And I get it, you have to safeguard these, you have to safeguard this precious community, but also allow people who are curious to enter into it, even if they might not have the right ideas in the beginning. So you know already going into more crypto focused communities and educating there as well, because those are the types of people that will be most susceptible to understanding what Bitcoin is. Right. And then also, I think a big wave of education is going to happen when we can figure out how to visually explain Bitcoin in a very easy to understand way without even using language. That’s something that I know that we want to start exploring a little Bit since we are a global app and we have a global audience, but it’s so hard to communicate in a language that everyone understands. So visually, I think that’s going to be the easiest way to do that. But it’s definitely very challenging.
Voltage – 00:09:24:
Yeah. So from a marketing standpoint. Like with you guys having 70000 people on the waitlist. What kind of gets me excited is the day you guys officially launched and people can download the official app and it’s on the App Store. There’s a certain amount of downloads you need in like a day and a week to maybe hit the top and really kind of take the viral waitlist growth forward to reach more people. What’s that line in the sand and what type of impact do you guys see that making and just creating awareness about Bitcoin.
Brianna – 00:09:58:
Oh, God. If we become the top in the App Store on the first launch week, I’m going to have a panic attack. But I do think that having bitcoin apps in particular being in the top ten, that’s obviously a goal, and that’s a win for everyone, because you know if Zebra wins, if NOAH wins, if whatever, if a wallet of Satoshi wins, I don’t really care. It’s all driving bitcoin adoption. And so for me, that’s super exciting. It’s really exciting for me to see people who don’t know much about bitcoin hop into our discord because they signed up to the waitlist because one of their friends told them we had a cool brand or something, and then they actually become Bitcoiners just by hanging out with us. Right. I think that we can make this happen at a larger scale, even when we have hundreds of thousands to hopefully millions of people using our app and learning from us in the app directly. I’m very excited for that, but there’s definitely lots of planning to do before that even happens.
Voltage – 00:11:16:
Absolutely. And is Alan here right now? Did he bounce out or is that him under the NOAH account? Do we know if Alan here with us?
Brianna – 00:11:32:
Oh, sorry, I was on mute. He was a speaker here under Remnant AI, but I believe he had some technical difficulties, so I’m just going to give him a second again.
Voltage – 00:11:46:
Okay?
Brianna – 00:11:47:
Yeah, cool. All right, let’s see if he can rejoin.
Voltage – 00:12:10:
And just while we’re waiting for him, you’re going to be using Lightning addresses within the app, correct?
Brianna – 00:12:17:
Yes. Very excited about that.
Voltage – 00:12:21:
Awesome.
Brianna – 00:12:23:
Yeah, we’re going to be hopefully releasing our Lightning address functionality in the next few weeks, so hopefully by the next beta cohort after the second one, and I’m very excited to start using mine. We have our team members are already reserving their Lightning addresses, but yeah, I think that’s really going to be key to this next stage of I guess if you want to call it bitcoin banking right. Is having all of these different apps communicate with each other and to be able to seamlessly transfer money in such a simple way, it’s really like the next frontier. And I really think that if traditional banks and even neo banks, if they don’t catch up to this, and if they’re unable to be interoperable with other banks, they’re going to be losing a lot of customers, in my opinion.
Voltage – 00:13:32:
All right, cool. I’m pulling Alan up here. It looks like he’s connecting. Yeah, I know. Right now you mentioned you guys are rolling out the ability for payments to be simple and easy from the app. And one of the really popular topics I know that catches a lot of heat, but people also enjoy is yield. And while a lot of yield comes from rehypothecation and like some of these inherent risks, I’m not a financial strategist by any means and understand the stuff as an expert. But what I do see is rehypothecation those funds get lent out to short sellers, which can suppress the price of bitcoin, but it’s also putting your capital at risk for a small return. So I would be really interested to hear what Alan has to share just in terms of how you guys view helping people create yield with their bitcoin and what that is going to look like just for bitcoin banking and neo banking in the future.
Brianna – 00:14:45:
Totally. I do think that you need to make him a speaker, though. I’ve been trying to press invite to speak, but it doesn’t seem to be working. So maybe it will work if you do it.
Voltage – 00:14:57:
Yeah, I sent him a couple here. This is where we make a couple of jokes about Twitter spaces and it’s inconsistency and everybody slaps the laughing emoji, right?
Brianna – 00:15:12:
Yeah, let’s all do that. Ha ha. I love Twitter spaces.
Nate – 00:15:20:
No, I was just going to say Twitter is just like a small start up, though, so cut them some slack.
Brianna – 00:15:27:
Sure. Yeah. Jason is laughing really hard right now. Well, I can speak a little bit to this because we are exploring different ways to create yield in the app. And one of the ways is actually it’s a very simple way to create yield and it’s essentially to leverage these savings badges that we’re creating in the app, right. And to actually think of how we can create ads within the app through these savings badges so that folks can earn yields in a very safe way. Let’s say Voltage wants to have a Voltage branded badge in the NOAH app and you can click on the badge and see everything about Voltage and it can give you a savings boost. Let’s say it’ll give you 5% back for a month, right? And you can apply that savings badge to your account. That’s one of the ways that we’re exploring yield because we are looking into defy, we are looking into Genesis, we’re looking into these other sorts of solutions. And Genesis does do rehypothecation. So it is definitely very tricky, especially creating yields on bitcoin. So it’s definitely something that we’re continuing to do research on. But for the time being, we are going to be using these savings badges to give people initial savings boosts, which I think personally is a lot safer than putting a bunch of money into a yield farming scheme.
Voltage – 00:17:19:
Right. So that would be like a brand actually sponsors that badge and that’s how individuals could earn, right?
Brianna – 00:17:27:
Exactly. And this is really appealing for folks who maybe don’t have much bitcoin in their wallet, right, but they can earn a pretty high yield on it for like a month straight and then use it. Right. So I think this is something that is going to be really appealing in emerging markets especially, which right now is really our main demographic. If we look at the spread of folks who signed up for the wait list. So even providing that kind of yield is much better than nothing at all. And then also if you’re looking at the rates of other yield offering services, I recently received an email from BlockFi saying that they’re continuously decreasing their rates. Just even having the ability to go, okay, my money is safe in here and I’m still generating. Yield is such a huge game changer in my opinion.
Voltage – 00:18:28:
Yeah. When I pose these questions, I definitely speak from my own brain. Most of the team at Voltage when we talk about these things we are very for holding our own keys. So these questions by no means are reflection of the team or our company or anything, but at the same time this is a very in demand things from just consumers and people broadly in the world. A lot of people do not have savings so if there’s a way they can make an economic decision to earn for themselves, it’s a personal decision they need to make. So I think that’s a really creative way that you guys are approaching it and pretty cool because if you have a very effective app and a powerful banking experience for people and then brands can come in and create awareness and people can earn yield from that, that’s a pretty interesting approach. I really like that. And Alan. Hey. Welcome, man.
Brianna – 00:19:26:
Finally. On the road being a long drive and where there needs to be no coverage. So sorry about that. Any question you have maybe on the yield side of things?
Nate – 00:19:53:
Yeah, Bobby, I want to talk about the yield thing just for a second because I’m really familiar with earning sats by selling channels on the Lightning Network on Lightning Pool and Magma and these places and I really like that because I always have control, right. I’m just providing in bound liquidity and people are paying me for it. Have you guys considered maybe the possibility of just like running really big Lightning nodes and then you can open up channels with your clients deposits for a price and then maybe keep half of that and then give the other half back to the customer or something like that? That’s pretty close to no risk.
Alan – 00:20:34:
So that is, I mean technically it’s not something you call yield but that’s definitely I mean if you ask me, it’s probably one of the best ways to generate sats on your stack at the moment in a safe manner and also it’s very useful for everybody. I think what could be helpful to optimize your return is I’m sure there are going to be some solutions that are going to come up to optimize your channels and the fees you take and just to maximize the revenue on your channel. I can say this is something that is working on at the moment, but it’s one way and the other way to generate a yield. What we call technically a yield at the moment. It’s not very cyberpunk, but it’s through a custodian, for instance, or something with Genesis. And yeah, I think there are still plenty of things to be done to generate yield in a safe manner and this is definitely something we’re looking at at NOAH. And there are different avenues to explore for sure in the coming months.
Nate – 00:21:59:
Yeah, I think definitely a lot of people’s brains are constantly thinking about this. I just think it would be cool to like if I wanted to use NOAH as my bank, I give you 10 million sats or something right and just and you say, okay, we’ll hold it for three months or whatever. And then on the back end, I don’t even know you’re doing it, but you’re selling that liquidity for channels on your nodes that you guys are running or something. And then I see that at the end of the 90 days.
Alan – 00:22:30:
Absolutely something that’s been discussed and probably down the road, there is going to be different ways to provide a return on your Bitcoin with NOAH and it’s going to be aligned with whether you want to be in control of your keys, whether your risk appetite and typical Genesisladen type of gift generation or exactly as you describe. Definitely something that we discussed with our CTO who know a couple of weeks ago where we could assign liquidity from our users to some nodes to separately generate a return for our users. And that’s very interesting and something we want to explore.
Nate – 00:23:29:
I love how you guys are exploring all of these options. That sounds awesome. Thank you.
Brianna – 00:23:35:
Yeah, I think as you both said, everyone’s trying to figure this out, right? And I don’t think that there is a tried and true solution right in this moment. And so I think in order to get it right, it requires exploring literally every single option right. And we want to make sure that when we do start giving you the folks using the app, that it is very safe, it’s very compliant and there’s very little risk involved because like I said, people using this app aren’t here to gamble or anything, they’re just here to save very safely. So there’s definitely a lot of research that still needs to be done, but we do have some solutions that I think that can work in the short term for sure.
Voltage – 00:24:32:
Awesome. I’d love to kind of take a shift here and talk about account and routing numbers. One thing with legacy banks, after 01:00 or so my time, I can’t send a wire until the next day. And account banking and routing numbers are challenging to keep up with and memorize and you don’t want to keep them saved on a local device because if someone has access to it, that can create problems. But with Lightning addresses and just Bitcoin making banking easier, how are you guys approaching just that identity, maybe outside of simply the Lightning address like our account and routing number is going to be a thing of the future.
Brianna – 00:25:14:
Totally. I can take a stab at this one. And then Alan, if you want to add anything.
Alan – 00:25:23:
The goal is rather to replace routing numbers, data, what have you, Lightning addresses, and make it very convenient for people to live on a big concern. That’s the whole thing and it’s definitely not part of the roadmap at the moment. That would have to be a very strong case to implement routing numbers and allow people to have chat accounts on NOAH. It’s not part of the plan.
Brianna – 00:25:59:
Yeah, I don’t think that’s the future of money at all. Yeah, we’re definitely building for the future and you know, right now not everyone is living on a bitcoin standard, but I think in a few years it will become a lot more normal to do so.
Voltage – 00:26:21:
Yeah, absolutely. Very cool. So I have a question, just from a lending perspective. We know 99 out of 100 Bitcoiners that are on Bitcoin Twitter do not want to take loans against Bitcoin. It’s obviously incredibly risky. But those who have a massive stack, they might want to take a loan for some reason because they do live on a Bitcoin standard and traditional commercial financing. If you want an SBA loan, you might be paying 3%. Like for a loan through Stripe, you might use a local bank and get it in that three to 5% range. Hard money lending which like the rates of those are typically in like the 1112 13, 18%. Some of those rates are actually higher than what you can get through Unchained and some of these other platforms. So what are you guys doing and just thinking about in terms of lending? Like, I’ve noticed that some rates in Bitcoin are actually much better than hard money lenders and a lot of investors use hard money loans for different business decisions. But how are you guys approaching just the lending market since we’re really in the first inning of that?
Alan – 00:27:37:
You want to go?
Brianna – 00:27:40:
You can go. I can talk about the credit card.
Alan – 00:27:44:
Yeah, sure. The lending part of things is, as you said, it’s still pretty risky. Our priority at the moment is allowing people to reunite, receive send pay bills in the not so long feature, use Bitcoin as a collateral for their credit cards. But the lending is further down the road on the road map, just because of the risk associated to it and our margin code is pretty quickly. It’s not something we want to expose users to. If you ask me, I think the ones that if I would have to borrow money against my bitcoin, I would probably go with a multistake set up. Not going to name names, but I think everybody knows what I’m thinking, what company I’m thinking about when I say logistics set up. But still personally for what I mean is worse. I’m not ready to get my bitcoin. And if I’m not ready, I’m not sure if I want to offer it in the short term to our users. So it’s still maybe a little bit early for the positioning we have, where it’s more about allowing people to save safely. And the closest we’re going to get, I think, is basically the credit card with Bitcoin as a collateral. It’s in some way boring against Bitcoin, but it’s not in the same type of amount and it’s not term as well. So the risk is probably more under control.
Voltage – 00:29:52:
So let’s break that down. That’s a good point. The lending market is not valuable enough maybe for the broader group of people to take loans against it and manage that risk. But what you’re saying. Using Bitcoin as collateral. Maybe for card purposes. Is that basically like. If I needed to go buy a refrigerator. Because my refrigerator goes out and I don’t have a thousand in cash. But maybe I have 20 grand in Bitcoin. I can pledge whatever. Like 40% LTV for my Bitcoin to pay off the fridge and then I kind of dollar cost average and pay down that loan over time or how does that work?
Brianna – 00:30:32:
Yeah, so it just works like any other credit card. Right. You receive a line of credit, except you put your Bitcoin down as collateral, like you just said. Right. And then you pay off your credit card at the end of the month or whenever you can. We’re going to be competitive with our interest rates, of course. And I think there’s so much freedom for so many people around the world who don’t have good credit scores, who maybe don’t participate in the traditional banking system and who do have Bitcoin to put down as collateral. Right. I think also as folks in emerging markets get access to our credit card, which I hope will be in the next year or so, as those folks get access to having actual credit may not be much, but it’s a lot better than having that at all. Right. But, yeah, it’s pretty simple. It’s just like any other credit card. You just use your Bitcoin as collateral and then pay it off at the end of the month.
Voltage – 00:31:43:
So much better rates. Since I’m kind of acting as my own bank and my own lender, it sounds like.
Brianna – 00:31:48:
Yeah, basically. And you don’t have to spend your Bitcoin, which is the best part, I know. I imagine a lot of us have had to probably sell Bitcoin for this or that, and it’s not the best feeling, especially when you’re still trying to build your stack. But if you don’t have to do that and you can continue to save this amazing currency, then it solves a lot of problems, I think.
Voltage – 00:32:22:
Absolutely. We’ll just send him another invite when he gets back. What are you guys excited about, maybe? What am I or Nate not asking that you think needs to be expressed? That’s coming down the line for these money apps of the future that involve Bitcoin.
Brianna – 00:32:48:
Yeah, I think I’ve touched on this a little bit before, but making Bitcoin an inclusive, very easy, stress free experience, I think that’s going to be the game changer. Right. If you look at what Cash App is doing with Bitcoin, which is something I’m really excited about, because they really understand people. Clearly, if they’re able to have this many users using their app on a daily basis, they clearly understand human behavior. And I think the key to building these types of money apps, these super apps, if you will, is understanding people, understanding their stories, understanding how they operate in the daily world, what they actually need instead of coming up with features that maybe just don’t make sense for people or are frivolous. I think that’s really going to change the game with these money apps because if you’ve ever used like Chase app or Wells Fargo or whatever, it’s a horrible experience and I think it turns people off to the idea of actually becoming more in charge of their finances. And I really don’t want that to happen with NOAH. I think NOAH is going to succeed because it makes money easy and stress free and simple and it makes you feel like you do have control over your money, which you do with NOAH. So that’s what I’m really excited about, is seeing more of these apps being developed where people are really exploring user experience and making it so much better. Integrating with other applications, integrating with other services to build these very powerful, very capable apps is also going to be very big and I think just general interoperability, right? Being able to use your money anywhere on the internet, if we can really nail that down, then scam over for traditional finance, in my opinion.
Voltage – 00:35:02:
Absolutely. Are you guys making it possible since you’re not like a bank like you said? Are you guys going to be offering a noncustodial solution long-term where someone might just be able to register, like with a proton mail without having to give up, like personal info or how is that going to work?
Brianna – 00:35:23:
Yes. So we are definitely looking into that. It’s a little bit tricky for legal reasons, but basically, I think the big question is how do you build a truly noncustodial app while also maintaining the beautiful, wonderful user experience of a custodial app? Right. Alan Zon can speak to this a little bit, but technically, NOAH is noncustodial. It’s not self-custody, but technically, we are not custodians of your money. We have this multisig sort of functionality that we put into place and so there is that as part of our plan. But as for a fully self-custodial model, I would love to see that while maintaining this very easy-to-use platform. Right? So we’ll see.
Alan – 00:36:35:
Speaking for myself, very much in favor of self-care. Study. But when you look at no admissions and we want to onboard the next billion people onto Bitcoin, I’m not sure the next billion people are going to be able to. I’d like to, I hope, but I’m not sure it’s realistic to expect everyone to use a credit card with a Wasabi wallet or Specter or something like that. Basically, in Miami, there was a lady from Spiral, I think, and so those guys are developing hardware with an app to try to solve this problem. We’re approaching it differently, and I think it’s a more practical approach because there is no other device with NOAH. It’s everything on your phone and it’s not for ourselves custody, but it’s noncustodial. And I’m going to try to explain this as simple as possible. It relies on multiparty computing and so basically the private key doesn’t reside on any device as a whole, but the private key with our very one share a component. Basically, one shot of the private key with our decision partner. One on the server at NOAH and one on the user device. And so the signing happens when the information contained in those three shards constitutes the private key and allow for the sign in. And so the reason why it’s not custodial is because the only person, the only individual that can trigger the assembling and it’s not really an assembly, it’s a sequence signing through MPC. And the only person who can trigger this is the end user. So the only person who can sign a transaction, trigger the signing of a transaction and release the sound is the end user. No, I can’t do this. And our technology partner can’t do this. And it’s only you. Everything happens through your device with a Pin password. You can use your fingerprint if you want, but at the end of the day, it’s the end user that says yes or no and triggers the signing of the transaction to reuse the funds and move them to another address. And we believe that the way we bring a non custodial solution to the masses in a convenient way where my mom can use it. My mom will never use a court card. Right. She sees me doing this sometimes and she still doesn’t know what to do. And she actually has a Nano X coupled with her iPad and she doesn’t know really how to use it. I can explain 5, 10 times and she says, you’ve got to be here today. I want to move my Bitcoin because I can’t do this on my own. And so maybe I’m going to be able to migrate my mom on Dora and she’s going to have something she can use autonomously that is noncustodial.
Brianna – 00:40:09:
Yeah, you said it perfectly. Alan basically, we do want to on board the next billion. I think it’s like the top priority right now.
Voltage – 00:40:42:
That’s great. Well, I think we have some time. If anyone has questions, feel free to raise your hand and jump up and ask if you’d like one thing while we’re waiting for others to maybe raise their hand and ask. I’m really excited to see. Like. How you guys handle. Like. Some of the education and like. Teaching people early on about like. Sovereignty and just cold storage and teaching people to have a balance because I imagine a lot of users who come to learn Bitcoin for the first time could very well be through Nowhere or any of these just money apps that are going to be coming to the phone over the next five to six years. It’ll be interesting to see what type of impact that makes on the average coin base user, how they hold something. Like, I can’t remember, I think it’s 2 million Bitcoin, but it would be really cool to see where that Bitcoin moves, like a higher percentage to cold storage. But maybe people also keep like a small portion of their stack inside one of these money apps and use their Bitcoin to just advance their lifestyle outside of Huddling. So that’s going to be really interesting to see, I think, long term.
Brianna – 00:41:54:
Yeah, and I agree. I think there is a balance. Right. Because if you want to actually put your Bitcoin to use on a daily basis. For example. If you live in a country where your currency is pretty much worthless. But you have Bitcoin and you have the ability to spend it. Right. I think there’s going to be a lot of people that will find a lot of use in NOAH in that particular situation. But then there are also a bunch of people who want a mixture, who want to keep other Bitcoin in cold storage and some in NOAH as well because maybe they want to save a little Bit on it. Maybe they want to transact using Bitcoin, right? But I think if we’re talking about folks in emerging markets who are going to be interacting with Bitcoin for the first time, educating about cold storage is really going to be way further down the line. And I think it’s still going to be a topic that is going to remain niche amongst the Bitcoin community. But I would love to see more people putting their Bitcoin in cold storage. Just not sure it’s super realistic for the average user, right, who just doesn’t want to think about their Bitcoin, who is using it out of necessity, or who’s using it because they have a terrible currency wherever they live, and because they have to think it’s already so difficult to educate folks about Bitcoin just as a concept, cryptocurrency as a concept, right? Even very close friends of mine who were probably going to rip their heads off from listening to me talk about Bitcoin for one more second, they still come up to me and they’re like, oh, I have a friend who also works in Bitcoin and it’s like, oh, really cool. It’s something called salana or something, right? It’s so crazy to me, but people still really can slate cryptocurrency with Bitcoin. So if we take a step back away from the bubble, I think that we’re all in Bitcoin, which is a beautiful bubble, but still we are in a bubble. It’s so hard for people to grasp this concept of a digital currency, and it’s even harder for folks to grasp the difference between Bitcoin and other currencies. And so we think for us, the first step is making that distinction and saying, hey, this is what Bitcoin is and this is what other cryptocurrencies are. And then we can start talking about cold storage, maybe later down the line. But even getting folks to understand what Bitcoin is, is really challenging. Hopefully it becomes less challenging over time, but like I said, what’s going to be key in adoption is really getting the narrative, I guess, making it click into people’s heads. It’s so hard.
Voltage – 00:45:07:
Yes, I would agree. The people I connect with best and most are the ones who want to come over and break bread and have dinner and talk and walking them through. That tends to go much better than just conversational or even over Zoom. So I agree it’s a definite hurdle we can overcome in time. But if there are no other questions from the crowd, we appreciate you guys joining with us today. And is there anything else you would like to share? Any just parting words before we hop off and wrap up for the day?
Brianna – 00:45:40:
Totally. If you’ve just heard of NOAH, you know through this conversation here, or if you’ve already been following NOAH for a while, but if you’ve just heard of NOAH, then I definitely recommend checking out our website. NOAH.com signing up for the waitlist. We are in beta testing right now. We do have a beta tester application which we can give out on Discord. Also, join our Discord. It’s pretty fun in there and there’s lots of opportunities to stack sats, but, yeah, join our wait list and you’ll hear a lot more from us in the coming months. Hopefully we get this app launched to the public in a couple of months, maybe two to three months or something like that, and then you can all see for yourself how amazing it is. But, yeah, go and check it out and definitely check out our Discord, especially if you like Bitcoin people and Bitcoin things.
Voltage – 00:46:42:
Awesome. Well, Brianna and Alan, we appreciate you joining us today and shedding some light on what you guys are doing and how the money apps and just Bitcoin banking type products will work in the future.
Brianna – 00:46:55:
Yeah, of course. Thank you for having us.
Alan – 00:46:59:
Yeah, thank you. Yes.
Voltage – 00:47:04:
For everyone else here over the next few weeks, we’re going to be making some announcements. We’ll have a Jeff Booth on Samson, Mao, stacy and Max, and some others down the pipe. So feel free to tune in on Wednesdays. And we’ll be sure to announce these a week in advance. But everyone have a wonderful evening. We’ll talk soon.
Brianna – 00:47:23:
Thanks. Bye.
